Put on your elf ears and chomp on dingleberries...let's close 2013!

Holy fuck, it's the holidays.

A frightening realization that I have now been situated in the City of Angels for nearly six months.  Wow...some little fawn-like Tumnus creature must have toddled away with some of the weeks, because I don't know where they went.  I swear just yesterday I was unpacking my moving truck.

Oh wait, it's because I WAS just unpacking my moving truck!  Or, my dear helper friends were.  For the second time in LA.  You see, it's been a journey thus far for me in this south-situated California city, and one that has extended the settling process a bit longer than I initially expected. 

First, for those souls (two of them, maybe) who have been eagerly awaiting my next post for entirely too long, or just for the types who enjoy reading life details, here's a brief update on some of what I've been doing since my last post nearly five months ago:

--Driving around the city.  A lot.  For many hours.  To places that are situated a Hobbit-world's journey away (a.k.a. one mile).  It's absolutely impossible to avoid.  As are the over-tech-attentive, humanity-ignorant drivers who so regularly create reasons for more spinal cord injuries in the world (which, thankfully, are somehow narrowly avoided on a regular basis).  Okay, got that one out of my system.

--Mentoring an 11-year-old to write his first screenplay as part of the Young Storytellers Foundation, and being reminded of the infinite imagination that exists in young, un-checked brains.  They are often much more creative than folks who are getting paid millions to write screenplays for top studios (sorry, it's true).

--Traveling: to New York for a workshop of A Midsummer Night's Dream with the Shakespeare Society and Apothetae Theatre, to San Diego and East LA for readings of new plays, to Las Vegas for family adventures and Michael Jackson inspiration, and to other random Los Angeles locations for UCSD alum gatherings, wheelchair modification appointments, and other random life necessities.

New York; Shakespeare Society Artist Residency, with Apothetae Theatre Company and Guests

--Consuming great quantities of coffee and tea as I increase my hours spent in coffeeshops, developing myself as a writer.  Current projects include a play and a TV pilot (as I could not exist as an actor in LA without having a pilot that you HAVE TO read...the additional play will really set me apart).  Oh, and being carried up many flights of stairs to participate in a writing group comprised of talented industry writers, including a couple of childhood friends of mine.  Who knew that all writers in LA live in cute, tastefully-decorated nooks situated atop steep hills with too many stairs required for entry?  Needless to say, these writers are getting their deadlift weight exercise by having me in the group...and accepting the challenge graciously.

--Storytelling as part of a friend's "No Pressure Storytelling Show" at iO West, and catharting about working at winter lodges, getting butt cysts popped, and encountering uncomfortable cultural situations as a social work grad student, all to the delight of late-night Hollywood stragglers.

--Auditioning - slowly but steadily - for casting directors (some of them "big-time") and network diversity showcases, and learning a great deal about the media perception of disability in the process.  (Just a quick educational note to casting folks: wheelchair users teach, parent, travel, are funny, teach sports, date, have sex...they don't just sit behind desks as secretaries and I.T. professionals.)  No big movie deals yet, but this career is a painstaking marathon.

--Randomly finding myself in the middle of attending or participating in shows like Let's Make a Deal or MTV hidden camera pranks.  Possible upcoming air time will occur.

--Best of all, meeting the random characters that populate this blanketed city: random war vets who want to tell me their story while waiting to buy alcohol in line at CVS; dudes that have to spend 30 minutes in furniture stores or Starbuckses telling me how I MUST become a motivational speaker; or random cats at Hollywood bars that confess over Mexican cabbage soup that alcohol, tattoos, and beard choices are the main roadblock to a career of successful improv or sketch comedy.  (Which, when you think about it, makes sense...most successful sketch or improv actors are surprisingly clean cut.)

So Regan, you ask, why must you enumerate all of these things for me?  Honestly, I do it partially for my own encouragement, to remind myself of what six months in Los Angeles can yield.

Because, the honest truth is:
1. I just realized that "honest truth" is somewhat redundant.
2. It's been hard.  Yes, even the ever-positive, optimistic Reganator has, amidst random activities and encounters, felt confused, disheartened, alone, angry, frustrated, and disdainful of Los Angeles.

Why?  Because 6 months in LA is just a taste.  And aside from much of the mouth-watering cuisine that is offered in Thai Town, the taste of LA demands an acquired palate.  Most people say it takes at least 3 years to develop a full-blown appreciation of its flavors, and even then it's still sometimes just a two-and-a-half star experience.

With five-star tapas between the main courses.

To explain this, let me share some of the less-enjoyable experiences the city has doled out in the last several months:

--I initially moved into a living situation I found through Craigslist, and discovered that this can be complicated.  My roommate was unfortunately dealing with a fair number of life and health situations that I hadn't been aware of, and I determined that I needed to move.  I did, and less than two weeks later she sadly passed away.  A sorrowful and sobering experience, considering that she was my age, and also had a disability.

--Being without health insurance for the first time in my life, I applied for individual coverage and was denied due to preexisting condition (being paralyzed...even though I live a significantly healthier lifestyle than most people walking around on two feet).  And of course, the stress of the first few months induced various small health maladies that would be exacerbated by my sitting all day long.  So, I found myself frequenting free clinic waiting rooms, for hours on end. (Which, in the end, was a surprisingly positive experience...thank goodness for places like the Saban Free Clinic.  Shout out!)

--Searching for housing I was exposed to the woefully challenging task of finding adequate and affordable wheelchair-accessible housing in Los Angeles.  Housing in LA is hard enough, and adding basic accessibility needs like grab bars and accessible parking spaces to the mix makes for a hair-yanking conundrum.  (Upside: discovered Equity Residential, which has a special "Mobility Impaired Living Enhancement" program at some of their properties to make any necessary access modifications for tenants with unique needs...wish I had known when I was moving here!)

--Experiencing the joys of LA parking...they literally post 5 signs in a cluster above parking meters, and two meters down post another 5 signs with completely different regulations!  "Reading the fine print" takes on a new meaning.

Annnnd,
moving trucks that break down on the highway;
unforgiving health club membership contracts;
extreme body-focus that makes for extreme insecurity in the general populace;
defense mechanisms that prevent people from making real connections with other humans;
tedium in searching for jobs that ultimately don't respect their employees;
ridiculous roadways and drivers that make for dangerous driving conditions.  You thank your lucky stars if you're alive at the end of the day.

It's all summed up by this: I auditioned for a primetime show on a major network, and soldiered through a dead battery and rolling a mile in a suit and 90-degree weather to make it on time.  And I got CAST!  Only to get notice two days later that the show had been cancelled.  Fail.

I know...many of these challenges aren't necessarily exclusive to LA.  But, they seem to occur in higher frequency here.  And they affect you more deeply, since you're often wading through the abyss on your own, separated from friends by hours of mid-city traffic.  After all, millions of people live in this fishnet-spread, sardine-packed town.  Humanity exists with higher frequency.  And because of the higher occurrence of humanity, investments aren't made in people.  It all comes down to the $$, and especially in the industry, people can be replaced easily and swiftly.  So, you see millions of dollars thrown at people and projects on whims, betting that they might yield return.  And once there is the slightest indication that something won't yield a high enough return, it's trashed.  A consumerist culture with no longevity...live for today, because tomorrow you might be thrown out with the dog poo.

Now, I'm all about carpe diem mentality.  But, there's a difference between appreciating, honoring, and immersing yourself in each day, each moment, each opportunity...and just using and discarding because you don't give a shit about anything beyond your own pithy existence.

Yes, our existences are pretty miniscule and fleeting in the overall scheme.  And there are definitely times when I think, "What is the point?"  We strut and fret on our stage, and then it's over.  But I think the upside of LA is that it's illuminated something for me: that I embody some level of purpose, meaning, and spiritual value that makes me recoil when I'm presented with an environment that urges a person to not care.  And for that, I am truly grateful.  Because even if I'm wrong about it all - even if all if this IS pointless or purposeless - at least I'll behave under the illusion that each day, encounter, person, and experience is loaded with value, and therefore will hopefully achieve something great in this life. 

Or, maybe I'll just smile a little longer, and possibly make someone else's day when they feel like the universe is loading dung atop their noggin.  And that's purpose enough for me.

Joy and tradition in LA

So I end this year by saying thank you, City of Angels.  I shall continue to...
drive your streets with caution and as much patience as I can muster;
absorb volatile comments from your drug-users;

bang through your heavy doors into casting director offices where I work to convince them that people who don't stand on two feet or wax every strand of peach fuzz off their body can be talented and engaging;
fight against your enticement to treat people like they don't matter; 
write the stories you haven't yet discovered;
wave in appreciation when one of your drivers lets me merge on the freeway, even if they don't understand the gesture of appreciation;
wear my jeans and Denver Broncos shirts, and buck the hipster glasses, knit scarves, and beards that abound (the beard should be easy to avoid);
and sing Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson songs at the top of my lungs in my minivan, while dancing and attracting the amused expressions of bus tourists who think, "LA people are crazy."

Hmmm, perhaps I'll end up fitting in here better than I thought.

And for now, happy holly-days to all.  Enjoy, and I'll communicate with you in 2014!

 

Month One in LA: The Passive Aggressive Roller Coaster

Short and sweet update since my last post:
I finished grad school at UCSD (woot!).
I moved to LA (woot?).
And now, on to the city.

This is the second time in my life that I have lived in Los Angeles.  The first time was as an undergraduate at USC: I went in as a film major, and I came out as a paraplegic.  I therefore know full well - just like Jack Nicholson in Chinatown - that shit happens in this city.  As a sophomore at USC, before the car accident on the 10 freeway in which I was injured, I had reached a point where I was DONE with LA.  While I enjoyed certain aspects of the city (the diversity, the food, the arts, the eccentricity of humanity), it challenged my psychosocialspiritual self on other fronts (the traffic, the plasticity of self-involved individuals, the intense focus on personal appearance, the acceptance of poverty and marginalization of certain populations, the sprawl, and more).

I therefore began my second sojourn to LA with a combination of trepidation and excitement.  It commenced with my final MFA Acting showcase with UCSD, where seven of my classmates and I put ourselves in front of hundreds of agents, managers, and casting directors to say, "Here we are!  Do you want us?"  (Not literally...but such a message was subtext in the scenes we performed for them in a 30-minute presentation.)  Luckily, a few splendid folks indicated that they were interested, and despite the fact that I was intrigued by the enigmatic badass that is New York City, poor wheelchair accessibility and threats of cold weather deterred me from moving east.  A few weeks later, I was heading to LA.

So.  The thing about Los Angeles.  There are actually many things.  But I shall start off with a couple of stories to set the stage (which will undoubtedly turn into a Ulysses-esque epic that shall continue in future blog posts.)

Story one: On my way to meet one of my UCSD classmates in Hollywood for a check-in coffee, I had a few random minutes to kill (which is the side product of trying to be on time in LA - the only way to surely be prompt is to pad your travel with about an hour of extra time...which, inevitably, gets you to places early, with only random and unnecessary tasks to accomplish).  Hence, I stopped for gas at a Hollywood station.  And of course, you cannot visit a gas station in Hollywood without one of the city's less stable loveables approaching you for some money.  This particular day, the gentleman was wearing jean shorts, a spotted white t-shirt, a long-hanging necklace with a Christian(?) cross, and a mop of bowl-cut hair that was indistinguishably between life and death.  In the few minutes he had to make his case before the Vietnamese gas station owner yelled him away, here was his monologue:
"Oh, miss, do you think you could...give me just...you see, I just need a little bit [hold up empty gas can here] to...you see, I just got out of UCLA.  They put me in the psychiatric ward - did you know that they can hold you for 24 days?  24 days!!!  Without any reason!!  They can keep you there.  They kept me there, and...what happened to you?"
"Oh, I was in a car accident about 11 years ago."
"Seeeeeeee, that's what I'm sayin'!  This city is just a roller coaster.  Up and down...but 24 days!  And I'm not crazy, but they make me stay there, so if you just...[Regan hands him a dollar]...oh wait!  Let me pray first." [He gets on one knee, rests his head on his hands on the side of the gas pump, and mutters some unintelligible things.  Then head up.] "Aw, thank you, thank you, you see?!  The lord is good.  He said, he's good.  You just gotta keep goin', I keep goin'.  You're just a...see this here, man!  This lady over here is just an incredible...!  [Vietnamese station owner starts yelling at him]  You take care of yourself, and watch out...24 days!  It's a roller coaster ride here, up and down - yah, whatever man! - up and down.  Bless you, bless you..." [trails off as he runs and hops in a car with a lady waiting, and they screech out of the parking lot...no doubt to go purchase some substances a la Breaking Bad.]

Story two: Fast forward a few days...I was sitting on a corner in Culver City a couple of days ago, waiting to cross the street, and another anticipatory ambulator started remarking on the ridiculousness of the signal timing.  As we traded exasperations for a minute, he said he was originally from New York.  Somehow, we made our way to a conclusion that Los Angeles and New York are both cities that will assault you.
"But," he said, "at least New York is direct about it...you know how it feels about you.  Los Angeles is passive aggressive - it'll smile at you, and then slap you in the face."

And there you have it.  The thing about LA, after the first month back?  It is a passive aggressive roller coaster ride.  One day it praises you and loves you, gives you an audition, bathes you in sunlight, and says, "Yes, you're worth it."  And the next day?  It tells you you're not pretty enough, it gives you a parking ticket for no reason except the parking enforcement officer thinks AM is synonymous with PM, it strands you in hours of traffic at midnight on the 405, it denies you a job, it sponges up your money, and it makes you feel a bit lost and lonely.

But then, as you're bitching to yourself driving home, you pass the same spot three nights in a row where some barely-living figure is huddled against the concrete wall under an overpass, feet poking out of a too-short blanket, just trying to survive one more night.  And in that moment, your faith is simultaneously crushed and revived.

You renew your self-vow to get up one more day and achieve that dream that millions of others are seeking, because why not?  What else do you have to do? And how great that you're HERE and DOING this! And hell, a meteor might collide with the planet in a few years anyhow, so you might as well go for it.  And you say, "Fuck 'em...I'm gonna be who I am and if  Mr. And Mrs. Angeles don't like me, then I'll leave!"

And so the world turns on my first month in LA.  I believe this city CAN assault you, and every day you can witness things that devastate you.  But, for now, I am privileged and lucky: I have a roof over my head, friends with whom I can rebuild, re-tool, and rejuvenate, a strength of self I've built from my past lives and the people who have guided me through them, LA peeps who BELIEVE in me, and a dream in my heart that craves fulfillment, and insulates me from some of the assault.  And my one-month-in wish is this: that I never lose the hard focus on this city, frustrating and devastating as it may be.  Even if it tosses me, turns me, and loop-dee-loops me to the point of wanting to vomit in its passive aggressive face, I pray that I never become so overwhelmed that I allow myself to become dulled to its realities, and drift into a malaise of soft focus where I don't notice the huddling figure under the overpass because I'm too caught up in my own anxieties about how "successful" I've been.  Then I'm not really LIVING...I'm just coasting, passing then aggressing.

As I move into month two, I shall avoid deriding this city for its complications, and rather attempt to enjoy the hills - both the trudge of the climb, and the WHEEEEEE of the release. And hey, at least it's sunny. :-)

Regan's MFA Thesis Statement and Graduation Sonnet

In order to finish my MFA, I had to create a written statement, which along with all of my 3rd-year onstage work serves as my Master's thesis.  I share it with you here, along with a little picture from graduation, which indicates how I felt about the entire thing:

MFA ON WHEELS

            MFA Actor training: three years of character schizophrenia, interpersonal conflagration, fatigue-based medical challenges, alienation from the “normal” world, and interrupted connection with family, friends, home, and equilibrium.

So…WHY?  Moreover, being a person who navigates the world on wheels and already endures the unique stresses of spinal cord injury, why instigate a reworking of philosophies in a program that has been based on bipedal bodily status quos?

Some might think I had something to prove.  And they’d be correct.  From my first moment onstage at UCSD, I charged myself to prove my own worth and the collective value of a population that has been historically and systematically cast out, marginalized, and devalued, even in the artistic community.

My three years at UCSD have exposed every ounce of potential tucked inside the mysterious instrument that is my body…even in my apparently non-feeling, “quiet” parts.  My philosopher self has learned to externalize the internal; to translate cerebrations into action that can be observed and absorbed onstage by my fellow human beings.  And now I can roll forward, on-voice, full-body, with an active heart and clear intention, to awaken others from their life malaise and illustrate that things can be more than what they seem.  Hopefully I will encourage other “abby-normal” humans to embrace the uniqueness of their identities and break out of their fears, hurts, and set conceptions of reality to engage with the world.  To be a do-er.  A live-er.  An ACTor.  To be exact, an MFA – Mothafuckin’ Actor – on Wheels.

  

And now, into the fray of LA (where I have relocated) to make my way as an actor.  Next up: a reflection on my first month in Los Angeles. :-)